


Time will tell

by Thaum



Series: Of elves and men [5]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Dark Thranduil, Depression, Desperation, Hurt No Comfort, Insanity, Loneliness, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thaum/pseuds/Thaum
Summary: Insanity gets hold of Thranduil. The world has changed beyond his recognition and he is lost in his mind, cursed to go on for eternity with time as his only companion.Yes, a sad story again. Although "time" reminds me a little bit of Wilson the volleyball from the movie "Cast Away". Unfortunately, there is no ship to save the Elvenking. So: hurt, no comfort. My speciality, I am afraid.





	Time will tell

**Author's Note:**

> English isnt my first language, be nice.

Sometimes time was nothing to him. Sometimes, it was all that mattered. It had become his only companion and he knew it. He knew it better, than anyone ever had. Time had many faces and he had seen them all. Once, it had looked back at him with his own face and he remembered that hysteric laughter, that seemed to come from someone else, only it didn't. For a moment, he was time and time was him and he asked it, why it laughed. Then it ended, what was ridiculous, because it was time and time never ended. He knew it better, than anyone else. But still it did and he was Thranduil again and time was time again, as it had always been. Hadn't it?

Time was his friend. It told him wonderful stories about a land called "Woodland Realm" and a great Elvenking. An elf, that looked disturbingly alike himself as well, but who was nothing alike nonetheless. He was a wise, determined, passionate spirit with strength and flaws and a purpose. Thranduil had given everything, to be only one of these things. He loved the stories. The green trees in it became alive again, he felt the sun at his face and heard the voices of the palace, the wood, as if he'd been there. Tales of elves and men, tales of beloved people, friendships, children, family and love. And then, time sneered at it, shrugged its shoulders and took it away. The men died, the elves faded and there was no king anymore. The wood was silenced.

 _"That is gone."_ Time was a thief.

Some days he felt clear enough, to walk through what was left of what he once had called home. Clear enough to be aware of it. The trees were weak and few and the halls of his previously beautiful palace had decayed. The wood was too quiet, the trees sung no song and the animals told him nothing. They didn't recognize him. They probably never heard of him. Sometimes, he himself hadn't. Often he stood at the wrecked remains of what he occasionally remembered to be a fountain and stared at his reflection in the little pool of water that gathered in it after a rain. He looked the same, as he had done thousands of years ago. The same as he did, when he followed his father to the Greenwood, when he fell undyingly in love, when he held his own son in his arms for the very first time. The same as he did, when the world had been bright and his heart full of happiness. Time was an incredibly skilled liar.

He blurred his image in the water with his hand.

_"Why isn't that gone?"_

Time carelessly shrugged its shoulders again. Thranduil had asked himself repeatedly, how it could make this movement seem so effortless, although the weight of all of eternity had to be on it. But maybe that was the point. Maybe it wasn't time, but him again, and the shoulders not its own.

 _"Why am I still here?"_ He asked time once more and time stared back at him with a raised eyebrow, that it wasn't supposed to have.

_"Are you?"_

When he was at his lowest, time started to whisper about horrendous battles and wars. It came into his dreams and showed him every mistake he had ever made, every elf and man he had failed, countless times, over and over again. It pointed at his father in his blood, dead at his feet after the battle. _"That should not have been him."_ And his father turned his head and watched him accusingly with his own eyes. Thranduil screamed until his throat was raw. He awoke, but somehow there was no difference between dreaming and being awake anymore. His nightmares didn't need to wait for him to fall asleep. Time had made sure, they were forever engraved, haunting him, in no matter what condition. It had made them immortal as well. Time was vicious.

Then time told about pain and despair. It brought dragons and fires and all the terrors of Morgoth. He was too terrified to start screaming again and felt his insides turn into ice, while his outsides were aflame and he lived through the torture again of half his body getting burnt. However, it was insignificant, compared to the agony he felt, watching his wife become nothing but a memory, protecting their son, while he couldn't reach her. Her fëa had teared off his own, ripped him almost apart that moment and had left him with an equally destroyed soul, only half, matching his body. He'd been all alone in the darkness. All he remembered was cold, rage, exhaustion and a frightening void that had tried to draw him in, promising oblivion. But it hadn't taken him, not all of him at least, as much as he had longed for it. It had thrown what was left of him back into the waiting arms of time. "I am merciful and time is a great healer." it had said. It lied almost as good, as time itself.

Sometimes, when the inner turmoils subsided for a while, he became aware, that he had spent days, maybe weeks lost in his head. How could the past be gone, while the most terrible parts of it were so real in his mind? Where was the logic in that irony? He didn't understand and pondered, if he really knew time as well, as he had thought. It had to be absolutely insane, to make sense.

_"It is fitting, that I am all that you have left, don't you think?"_

There was that laughter again and when Thranduil turned and looked at time, he wasn't sure anymore, who of them had spoken these words. They stared at each other wordlessly, while time tilted his head questioningly at him. Why could it not leave him alone? Why and how could it go on and by but never come to pass? Wasn't that absurd in itself? Impossible? No, time passed, it just didn't pass. Was he thinking about time or himself? He had to ask it about it, even if he feared the possibility of being able, to understand its answer. Time surely would laugh at him again with every face it had.

But it was nothing, if not cruel. It would tell.


End file.
